People use handheld, mobile or other portable electronic devices for a variety of purposes, such as making telephone calls, texting, accessing the Internet, sending and receiving email, viewing, playing or consuming digital content, executing applications, playing games, navigation, and numerous other functions. Users of these portable devices may sometimes drop their devices. These fall events can induce severe mechanical loads on a device, such as by inflicting high deformation loads on the external and internal subassemblies. Further, many fall events can be difficult to replicate due to their dynamic nature and the unknown orientations of the devices during impact. Thus, efforts are made to design portable devices to withstand impacts caused by falls, but such efforts are not always successful and/or can result in over-designing some features of these devices.